Don't Just Read It...

cover sí

Dishonored

экиле UN RANDE

Introducing the New Monthly Digital Magazine

Get earlier access to new content than print subscribers. New issues will be delivered directly to your email inbox. Game Informer's first look and exclusive coverage takes on a whole new meaning when you go digital.

Experience multimedia content that's deeper, richer and more immersive than what the physical world can offer with active links, videos and more.

Get immediate access to a year's worth of previously published issues and a keyword-searchable online archive.

at gameinformer.com/godigitalnow

Already a Print Subscriber and Want to Switch to Game Informer Digital at No Additional Cost? Learn How to Make the Switch at gameinformer.com/godigitalnow

ANDY McNAMARA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF andy@gameinformer.com

og

Read my column or comment on this letter at

gameinformer.com/mag or follow

3 $ n & 5 ES © s E 8 8 E E Ё $ = © 8 &

@GI_AndyMc

Change It

e all know the stereotype. Gamers sit in W their basements — or their parents' base- ments — and play games for countless hours on end. We are fat, anti-social, likely male, and haven't had a significant other in years (if ever).

Of course, many elements of that stereo- type are plainly false. The fact that we enjoy weekend-long gaming marathons doesn't mean that we're all just socially inept nerds with a case of arrested development. Gamers are a diverse group, composed of males and females with various interests and backgrounds — something that | think is a testament to the appeal of the hobby as a whole.

However, there is a bit of truth to the stereo- type that no one wants to admit. When it comes to the "fat" part, 1 don't think you can question that America (gamers included) has an obesity problem. It isn't a problem unique to gamers; in fact, | think gamers are leading the charge in changing their lifestyles, and in turn changing the stereotype for all of us. | hear the stories all the time.

“My father-in-law lost 25 pounds playing Wii Golf."

"Dance Central changed my life."

Wii Fit was a national phenomenon with stratospheric sales, the Just Dance series has topped the sales charts in recent years, and numerous other successful fitness games are available for Kinect, Wii, and PlayStation 3. Gamers are losing weight and having fun doing it.

It's the New Year, and every gamer out there should make a resolution to throw in one of the many exciting fitness or dance games out there today. Change something far more important than a stereotype: Change your life.

LD

CLL

South Park: The Game

The developers at Obsidian are working closely with South Park Studios and creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to craft the most faithful game possible. That means you can look forward to plenty of lampooned games, inappropriate humor, and all the characters you've grown to love.

by Dan Ryckert

regulars

6 Feedback Readers bellyache about review scores, decry Nathan Drake's submarine sandwich peddling, and swap money- earning tips for buying this season's great games.

The Elder Scrolls V:

14 Connect

We sit down with Rockstar scribe Dan Houser for a chat about Max Payne 3, catch up with Chair regarding Infinity Blade Il, and take a look at the recent string of troubling events at Capcom.

>

LI

What's Happening at Capcom?

ча

==

SN

64 Previews Resident Evil: Revelations impresses on the 3DS, Dante looks cool as hell in new Devil May Cry screens, and we take a trip back to Gotham City.

Skyrim

80 Reviews The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of this year's most highly anticipated RPGs, and it lives up to every bit of the buzz. by Andrew Reiner

100 Game Over How much do you know about the sleepy moun- tain town featured on this month's cover? Find out with our South Park quiz. by Dan Ryckert

contents 3

4 contents

Devil May Cry

games index

Aliens: Colonial Marines............. 71 Assassin's Creed Revelations......... 84 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ....... 82 Devil May Cry .................... 72 Dirt Showdown ................... 76 Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The .......... 80 FOHUNÉ К Т bes 92 Game оїТһгопез................ .66 GoldenEye 007: Reloaded ........... 89 Gotham City Impostors ............. 74 Halo: Anniversary. ................. 90 Jurassic Park: The бате............ 87 Kinect Disneyland Adventures ........ 94 LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7.........94 Lollipop Chainsaw ................. 73 Mario KANT s 0.05000 rors ness sd 93

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection . . .

ЫК ЫЛЛЫК 91 Otomedius Excellent ............... 94 Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking. . . . . . . 94 Resident Evil: Revelations . . . . . . ... . . 68 Sniper Elite V2... corner 75 Spec-Ops: The Line ................ 70 SON. Re UA CU 64 Stronghold З „аавдаа 94

Sword of the Stars Il: Lords of Winter. . . 94

Drug Reference

Mild Language

Mild Suggestive Themes Simulated Gambling

i Violence

IANGE THE FI

SQUARE ENIX.

Contact Us

feedback@gameinformer.com

score be

and the ethics of vi products, while a fewréntré

More Than Meets The Eye GI's cover art never ceases to amaze, but issue 223% Fall of Cybertron really impressed me. I'm not sure who was responsible for it, but it was so good | separated it from the rest of the magazine and hung it on my wall as a poster. What could be more epic than Optimus Prime facing off against a giant metal dinosaur, with Cybertron literally falling to pieces in the background? Michael Webb Jr. Atlanta, GA

Thank you for issue 223's Transformers Primer in Game Over. | have been a fan of Transformers for most of my life, but didn't know some of the facts you shared. Your coverage of the "robots in disguise" has encouraged me to look deeper into the history. Could you suggest the best accepted media for this study?

E.D. Oakes

via email

If you're looking for more stories that

tie into the two games, check out the Transformers: Exodus and Transformers: Exiles novels by Alex Irvine, and the new Transformers: Prime CG animated series. Not only are they entertaining, they're 100-percent Shia LaBeouf free.

Remembering The Game Doctor

| just wanted to thank you guys for the memorial piece on Bill Kunkel ("Reflections on the Passing of Bill Kunkel," issue 223). It's an incredibly sweet gesture to recognize the forefa- thers of any line of work, and the cutthroat aspect of today's writing world often leaves that to other people. Thanks for being the other people. Kyle Dachik Baraboo, WI

Matt Helgeson did the gaming community a great service by not only remembering a legend, but at the same time introducing him to the younger generation. | had never heard of Mr. Bill Kunkel before seeing last month's Classic article. After reading it, | felt like | had just learned about a remarkable and great man. He seemed genuine and down to Earth, and reading about his legacy put a smile on my face. D.J.P. via email

A Fantastic Fanatic I'm so glad my magazine subscription is run- ning out soon. You gave Uncharted 2 a 10 and Uncharted 3 a 9.5? It's just an opinion, but it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about. Arkham City is honestly better that Uncharted 3? You can play both of those together and say that with a straight face? FYI, my other friends say the same about their subs as well. Enjoy your loss of business. Karim via email

Considering we received your letter a week before Uncharted 3 was released, we're guessing you're basing your opinion solely on your unabashed love of the series. Ours is based on playing the completed game. Also, who complains that a 9.5 is too low? That would be like complaining there are too many great games to play...

Cue This Guy As a subscriber, | rely a lot on your ratings to help me decide on purchases. | was disappointed this month when, out of 16 reviews, you gave an 8 or above rating to 14 games, and a 9 or above to 8 of them! Such generous scoring discredits your reviews and thereby reduces their utility. Perhaps with the impressive advancement of game technology in general, it is time to revamp your scoring system.

Saleh Shahid

via email

We're sorry you're disappointed by the number of good games on the market, Saleh. Rather than adjusting our scoring system so that more games get negative scores, we'll just go ahead and tell develop- ers to make their games crappier, so that we have more to complain about.

Friendship Is Magic... And Volatile

| recently read your Feedback response to Angelo's defense of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic ("Who You Calling Frilly?", issue 233). Now, | won't harp on you (love and tolerance is key), but I’m curious; just how many emails did you receive regarding the show? | ask because fellow bronies were posting pictures of your letter before | got the issue, and a main FiM news source mentioned it as well. | just hope that they didn't spam you with hate mail; that's just rude. David Rawls Southbridge, MA

Hey guys, | just wanted to comment on the one dude talking about My Little Pony. When I read that, | just shook my head. | hope you guys don't think that all us bronies are that over-sensitive. Most of us are normal guys, girls, and even ser- vicemen like myself! I love the show as much as anyone, but dang, that dude should learn to take a joke. “Frilly” is a pretty much the series in a nut- shell — but that's what makes it great! Michael F. Montebello, CA

Despite never describing FiM's frilliness

as a bad thing, some bronies took serious offense to our comments and responded with language that would make the show's peaceful ponies wither up and die. Most fans were surprisingly cordial, though, so in the spirit of peace and crap, we won't hold a grudge.

_ ~

A Fighting Chance | was so happy to see you guys publish a piece on the growing e-sports scene ("Pro Gaming Comes of Age,” issue 223). | know that your magazine is typically a console magazine, but the growth of e-sports is something | want a bigger audience to see (especially StarCraft 2).

Andrew Holliday

via email

As a fan of professional gaming circuits, I’m curious why fighting game tournaments were strangely absent from the article. | too enjoy witnessing high-level StarCraft play, but the games which get my heart racing, blood pump- ing, and hooliganism surfacing have definitely been tournaments like Evo, which broke records earlier this year by pulling in over two million unique viewers; or Space Battle Opera in Tokyo, where an estimated ten thousand people each paid $20 just so they could watch the live feed (myself included). To clarify, | thank Mr. Biessener for giving the scene some much- needed exposure, but leaving out the fighting game community in an article about the rise in popularity of e-sports is kind of like writing an article discussing traditional sports, then talking up football and basketball and forgetting to even mention baseball. Nick Fraker Cleveland, OH

You bring up a fair point, Nick. We chose to keep the article focused on StarCraft 2 and first-person shooters because of their broader appeal to general gamers, but

we certainly didn't mean it as a snub to fighting game fans. We've highlighted a number of pro fighters in our Gamer sec- tion in the past, and recognize the genre's considerable contribution to the popularity of e-sports.

Short Answers to Readers" Burning Questions

"Are the Short Answers to Readers’ Burning Questions real?”

Yes, unfortunately. "Your cool, wanna hang out?" Sorry, we're busy that day.

"| got a new laptop, a Chuck Norris poster, two blacklights, and a lava lamp! Do you have any job openings?"

You already work here, Dan.

Best Crank Letter Of The Month

“Nicolas Cage is not only a great actor but an even greater human being. I've had enough of your insults, so | am ending my subscription."

Worst News Tip of the Month:

"i want won for free please"

(Left) Bad Idea of the Month goes to Drive a Tank's Tony Borgolum, who lived up to his com- pany's name by letting Jeff Cork and Tim drive a tank. (Right) Bad idea #2: Letting Tim shoot that thing.

continued on page 8

feedback 7

Wi Holiday Game Excitement 34% 18 Brony Backlash 27%

IE Transformers Love 19%

WI “You Idiots Rated [Game Title} Too [High/Low]"" 18%

18 Rants Using "Rage" As A Play On Words 2%

Did your most anticipated holiday game live up to your expectations? Why or why not?

continued from page 7

( This month Reiner joined Vikings players Adrian Peterson and Chris Kluwe, and Ubisoft's Stone Chin to try out Assassin's Creed Revelations" multiplayer. Somehow the punter ended up the MVP!

ght) GI's news editor Jim Reilly looked mighty profes- sional when he met Bobby Kotick at this year's Nite to Unite dinner.

continued on page 9

8 feedback

I just witnessed one of my favorite and most respected video game protagonists hawking Subway sandwiches on cable television. Mr. Nathan Drake. | understand the need for market- ing and that many celebrities do commercials, but Drake isn't a celebrity. He's a bona fide character, someone who lives by his own rules, seeking out adventure and treasure. It seems like a major betrayal to have him selling fast food sandwiches. What do you think? Rich T. Wilmette, IL

We can appreciate Naughty Dog's attempts to attract a mainstream audience to its flagship series, which has served as a great introduction to the industry for many non-gamers. That being said, seeing one of our picks for 30 Characters Who Defined a Decade doing the "five dollar footlong" ges- ture in the multiplayer beta made us cringe more than eating a month-old sub would. On the bright side, maybe Golden Abyss will finally answer the mystery of what Nathan Drake is willing to do for a Klondike bar.

Paying The Bills

In issue 222, we asked gamers how they plan on paying for this season's deluge of great games. The responses we received convinced us that our read- ers are a creative - though morally questionable - bunch.

To pay for the explosion of new titles this holiday season, l've entered a religious congregation's essay contest for $300. In theory, the church will be paying for my virtual adventures!

Sam Morrison

| picked up a part time job working in a corn maze scaring the daylights out of drunken men and ditsy teenagers. So much fun!

Tony Feniello

My school sells Domino's pizza at lunch for $2 per slice. So, I'll buy a Little Caesar's pizza for $5, stick it in a Domino's box, and sell each piece for two bucks. Trust me, people at my school are stupid, and this is teenage business- man-ship at its best.

Jacob Archer

I'm selling a kidney. Thankfully, it's not mine... mwahahaha!

Andrew Sanders

HUME! ryan

Havermans We could make a joke about this, but mostly. we're just happy that people remember Earthworm Jim exists. 2 Jeriah Goldsby If there's one thing Duke hates, it's surprise hugs. 3 Charles Atkins Yoshi defends himself the only way he knows how throwing his unborn children at anything that scares him.

4 Dan O'Connor Rayman and friends relax on an island far, far away from the Rabbids.

CORRECTIONS:

As originally reported in our online review, Rocksmith received an 8.25,

not an 8.5, as was stated in issue 224. We regret the confusion.

In our PlayStation Vita feature in issue 224, we incorrectly stated that the

3G-enabled model would cost $399. In actuality, it will cost $299.

Enter the Game Informer Reader Art Contest. All you need to do is draw, paint, scratch, spit, or carve the best darn art you can think of and send it to us. Please include your name, phone number, and return address. If you're the monthly winner, we'll feature your work in GI and you'll receive a video game prize from the Game Informer vault. All entries become the property of Game Informer and can't

be returned.

Game Informer Reader Art Contest 724 1st SL N.,

3rd Floor

Mpls, MN 55401

(Left) Dan, on the other hand, looked like a professional mo- гоп when he crashed a Skyrim midnight launch dressed as Saint's Row: The Third's Pro- fessor Genki. (Center) When a giant Skyrim statue arrived at the office, someone had

to man up and give it a prostate exam. Enter Jeff Cork. (Right) How did Joe get so good at insulting people? By studying with the masters — like MST3K's Joel Hodgson, who is currently touring the nation with his new live show, Cinematic Titanic.

feedback 9

42

NOTABLES

interview: rockstar's dan houser

the return of infinity blade what's happening at capcom?

advanced tactics: the search for a smarter military shooter

afterwords: the legend of zelda: skyward sword

interview: ken ralston

opinion: in defense of japanese games

Has Motion Gaming Fulfilled Its Promise?

WHEN MICROSOFT'S KINECT garnered a Guinness World Record for the Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device by moving eight million units in its first 60 days on sale, a new era in motion gaming appeared to be well underway. But where have Kinect and competitor Sony's Move peripheral taken gamers? A year has passed since the release of both devices, and their software libraries have stagnated to the point that the accessories' effect on gaming seems fleeting.

connect 11

16 titles with Move functionality,

but only a third require it.

32 First-party titles.

Number of games requiring Move Scoring over 8 by Game Informer*: 1

64 titles with Kinect functionality;

81 percent require it

9 First-party titles.

Number of games requiring Kinect Scoring over 8 by Game Informer*: 7

*Game Informer has not reviewed all Kinect and Move titles.

12 connect

ittingly, Kinect and Move are follow- ing in the footsteps of the Wii, which after taking the world by storm has become irrelevant in the console race despite the fact that it's sold the most consoles of this generation. Kinect's amazing sales numbers over the first few months have given way to a much slower adoption rate. According to Microsoft, after Kinect shifted eight million units in the early days, the peripheral has sold only two million additional units from March until its first anniversary in November. Sony's Move has followed a similar trajectory. It hit 4.1 million units sold in its first two months on the market, and in mid-October it had shipped (not sold) 8.3 million Moves worldwide accord- ing to Gabe Ahn, developer support engineer for Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Perhaps more alarming than the peripherals" sales patterns is the underwhelming software for both Kinect and Move. Judging by Game Informer's own reviews*, only a handful of Kinect games - like Kinect Sports, Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, and Dance Central – have scored an eight or above. The Gunstringer is one ofthe few, if not the only game, that can be con- Sidered a core-focused title. Through this lens, the motion sensor mimics the Wii in its failure to offer a sustained stream of compelling and highly regarded software.

The software lineup of Sony's Move controller might appear better — more than 70 games sup- ported by year's end as opposed to Kinect's over 60 — but that's because the peripheral's func- tionality has been retroactively added to games that came out before the Move's launch. While Move may appear to serve the gaming tastes of core gamers better than Kinect with games like Killzone 3, LittleBigPlanet 2, and Heavy Rain, in the good majority of these titles the Move is an alternate control scheme and not the focus.

Despite these attempts by Microsoft, Sony, and third parties to make motion gaming an integral part of our gaming experience, at this point their implementa- tion has not significantly influenced this generation of games. The usual controller setup remains the standard, preferred way to play games.

John Koller, Sony's direc- tor of hardware marketing, is well aware of this even though he believes that for a title like Killzone 3, the Move and its Sharpshooter peripheral provide the best experience. "There are a significant amount of gamers that are going to be using the DualShock controller, and we are absolutely okay with that," he says.

The PlayStation 3 and Move may lack that must- have, Move-only experience, but Koller approaches the situation pragmatically.

“| think ideally we'd love to see maybe more required titles that come to the platform," he admits, but he also says Sony isn't demanding that developers put Move in their games. In general, he believes that whether a game uses the peripheral as a secondary control scheme or requires it, you can't shoehorn the peripheral where it doesn't belong. This philosophy is evi- dent in the company's larger approach to get- ting people to adopt Move. Most of the games requiring Move naturally appeal to a casual crowd who are more attracted to the peripheral itself as opposed to a more core gamer, per- haps, who may pick up Move because it's com- patible with a title like Resistance 3 that they may already own or are planning to purchase.

Sony's flexible outlook to the Move control- ler is a low-pressure pitch to gamers, and for better or worse, this won't change in the near future. Koller says that while the upcoming slate of software utilizing the peripheral includes all kinds of genres (including some big first- and third-party franchises and ones that Koller says "people haven't thought of before with motion gaming"), he also strongly intimates that sports and casual titles will remain the main focus of Move in 2012.

One of those sports titles Koller could be refer- ring to is Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods series, which is supporting Move for the third year in a row and introducing Kinect functionality for the first time. Golf is a natural fit for motion controls, and the success of the Wii versions of the series could be a road map for Kinect and Move. While the game's executive producer, Brent Nielsen, says the Kinect version is the definitive way he chooses to play the game, he also understands the lower adoption rate of the peripheral keeps publishers from supporting motion controls with most of their games. "You're definitely trying to hit the widest number of people possible, so you Still want to make it compelling for those people [using a standard controller]," he says. “I don't

know that we'd ever require it, and it being the only way you could play the game."

It's not surprising that Sony and a third-party software publisher/developer like EA want to have their cake and eat it too by providing motion- and non-motion gamers alike with.

a product they both can enjoy. Publishers hedging their bets like this, however, could be the reason neither Kinect nor Move have a definitive title that makes those peripherals a must-have item. Scanning some of the previously announced games for the peripher- als, it doesn't look like the cavalry is on its way. Kinect has titles like Fable: Journeys, Kinect Star Wars, and Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, but the first two games have not garnered significant hype or praise so far. Similarly, Move fans are pining their hopes on Sorcery, but that game hasn't been shown outside of an ЕЗ demonstration. Two high-profile titles, Mass Effect 3 (Kinect) and BioShock Infinite (Move), are using the accessories, but the peripherals' integration is not why gamers are looking forward to these titles.

The most exciting ways people are using Kinect may be in non-gaming applications. Microsoft provides a software development kit, which hobbyists and non-gaming develop- ers have leveraged for all kinds of different uses, from helping autistic kids via therapy to Kinect-created art. While nobody knows what kinds of inspiration game developers may find in these non-traditional uses of the peripheral, it's interesting that Microsoft cel- ebrated Kinect's one-year anniversary with the announcement of the Kinect for Windows program for commercial businesses and not a gaming-related announcement.

Regardless of the slowing growth, EA's Nielsen thinks that motion gaming in general is here to stay. "It's not a fad, and it's not something that's going to be one and done,” he believes. “I expect it to be a big part of gaming in the future."

M... us on E Like us on

gameinformer.com twitter facebook.

ockstar Games' vice president of creative Dan Houser, who's been with the company since its early days alongside his brother Sam, rarely gives interviews. Despite his reticence to talk to the press, his work looms large over the current landscape of gaming. As a writer for many of Rockstar's biggest franchises, including Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, he's given voice to dozens of beloved characters. Today, Houser is hard at work crafting Max Payne 3, a comeback vehicle for Remedy's trou- bled noir hero. Recently, we had the rare chance to speak with him about his background, influences, writing process, and vision for Max Payne.

Rockstar has always really put a premium on pop culture. What kind of stuff were you into as a kid? Music, TV shows, movies. | remember when we first got a VHS. My dad got one because he was a lawyer and a client wasn't paying his bill. His other client ran a video store, so we used to watch a lot of movies. One of the films [my brother Sam and I] watched obsessively was Bruce Lee in New Guinea. If you asked people if they liked Bruce Lee, they'd say, “Yeah, | loved Enter the Dragon.” But we loved Bruce Lee in New Guinea. | could never figure out any information on it; it didn’t seem to exist anywhere. Eventually, | realized that | could look it up on IMDB. It turns out it's Bruce Li, and it was a Singapore fake Bruce Lee film with dubious porn overtones, described as one of the worst films ever made. But when you're five and seven, we found it incredible. We'd try to imitate the movie and kicked a hole in our parents’ '70s-style glass door. That's why we loved The Warriors, which was another movie that they had in this local suburban video store * that we watched 100 times. It was amaz- ing — gangsters dressed up in makeup and baseball bats.

We loved books and pop music, old TV shows. It's different now, because you can find everything. In the ‘80s and early '90s, when we were getting obsessed with consuming culture, part of the appeal was the obscurity of stuff, about know- ing things that were hard to find — some game you couldn't get except on import or a hard-to-find book. Now, nothing is obscure anymore.

One of Rockstar's legacies is making games that felt like they were a part of the larger con- versation of pop culture. Games weren't really a part of the same conversation for many years of their existence.

For us, it wasn't that we looked down on that in any respect. But we just thought games could be something else alongside that. If you take Final Fantasy, it has roots in anime and manga. Across a global level,

14

RPGs had roots in Western fantasy like Tolkien, which influenced music and other things. So, games had connections, but not to the same things that our stuff con- nected to. There was a cutesy, Japanese, fantastical element to Nintendo iconog: raphy, which | suppose has some roots in cartoons.

Games didn't necessarily have rnany roots in other kinds of fiction that were popular in books, movies, and television. Musically, we were always obsessed with film soundtracks and good music. We felt obliged to put that in. In terms of what we Set out to do, it was to say that gamee are being made for audiences A, B, and С... but content-wise, we want to make them for another audience. An audience that's playing games, but isn't having content made for them. On a broader leve!, what we hopefully took out of things was that if you want to make good stuff, you have to put your heart and soul into it

| think we've done best when we went

in directions that people weren't expecting.

That's something that we'd take from a broad range of cultural influences — trying to stay ahead of what would be perceived as mainstream or what people expect.

A lot of the games Rockstar has made were risky projects. Making a game about The Warriors is hardly like making

a Star Wars game. Even Red Dead Redemption, which was a huge block- buster, or L.A.

Noire - who knew that people would want a Western or detective story? What's Rockstar's process for deciding what to make games about? Is it literally just what you think is cool?

It's almost that simple. It's what we think is

cool and what we think

Rockstar's

there's an interesting game to be made about it. There are things we think are

соо! but we can't solve some of the core mechanical riddles — or you know it's going to be a nightmare with certain tech issues So you don't bother going there.

But, fundamentally, if we think it's inter- esting we think we'll find a way to make the game interesting and then we'll have to figure out a way to sell it. We'll come to that much later. Our hope is that, if we make a fun and interesting game, we can find a way to make its money back and a bit of profit. That's our core responsibility as people that have been given money to do something by Take-Two. That's about it.

Market research will tell you what people last played and enjoyed; you're not going to find stuff that no one's ever done before out of that. It's impossible.

One thing that sticks out about Rockstar in the industry is that

it has a very strong identity. Blizzard or Valve has that to a degree, but the closest compari- son I could come up with is some record labels.

We set out to have the identity of Def Jam in music. We'd grown up in the era of a

lot of independent record labels that we worshipped. We wanted that kind of feeling around something. Where, we're obviously

part of a company, but we wanted inde- pendence within that company and that would be this label structure. The label would become an identity to the consumer. On a oynical level, it might convince them to buy something they wouldn't normally buy, and hopefully they'd enjoy it. But on

a more interesting level, hopefully they'd feel like it was a badge of consistency

and a sense of quality. There are certainly other companies that have elements of that – we're probably the only one that isn't a straightforward, if very large, developer. We absolutely started out in publishing and ended up owning development studios. It was a different approach.

I think that shows in the fact that you have a greater unity between the creative, advertising, and mar- keting of your games.

That was the idea of it being like a record label. It has to feel that way.

I think some developers see their own TV commercials...

And they hate them, and they aren't shown them in advance. Some places respect the money more than the developers. For us, the creative team is everything. Our mar- keting is showing off the game. We'll never make a campaign that's anything other than showing off the game.

Continued on page 16

Comes Clean

photo: Brendan Hoffman:

About Max Payne 3 and Game Writing

connect 15

Continued from page 14 You obviously have many different roles at Rockstar, but one of your main roles has been writer. Talk about your writing process. Part of the fun of doing it in games is that there is no agreed structure. For someone that is as scatterbrained as me, a great part of the pleasure is figuring out the structure of the games. The experience isn't just a long-form, linear film. You're able to have a film plot and have this more experiential way of experiencing the game world. You traverse the world, hear what the people say, listen to the radio, speak to pedestrians, read the newspaper in Red Dead - whatever it may be. It's figuring out how you can give the whole game world an overarch- ing personality in as many ways as possible. That's something that games do very well that's unique to games.

With our stuff, we try to find a new way to engage the player by rewarding explora- tion and rewarding discovery. We made up the way the games flowed and made up the process of doing the motion-capture cutscenes and everything since then — the talk radio, the pedestrian comments. We figured that out as a group and using that as a way of writing something that has per- sonality but isn't just revealed linearly.

Who are your influences

as a writer? Or did your

style evolve more from your working experience?

| fear so. There are lots of film scripts

that | love but would never try to overtly copy. GTA has its own tone that's evolved over time.

It could be people that you found inspirational, not necessarily influential. Well, | think for anyone writing gangster dialogue to say you didn't like Tarantino, you'd be lying. From a pure banter level, when we were doing GTA: London 1969 we were obsessed with The Long Good Friday. It's a famous English gangster film; it's got the best one-liners. It's the same with Goodfellas. Anyone making any kind of gangster fiction after that is influenced by that movie whether they want to admit it or not. Where they were much more about heists, Goodfellas was more about lifestyle. For us, our games deal in 24-hour day-and-night cycles. You're going to want to show people in different types of situations, so of course it's influen- tial — all the classic Scorsese films. When you're not American, it's one of the best American voices.

The challenging one, | suppose, in terms of finding a tone, was Red Dead. Bully was easy, because it was easy for me to imag- ine being a snotty kid. With GTA, Rupert Humphries, who writes the GTAs with me, and | never had productive criminal careers, so you're always trying to imagine things while trying to make the tough guys feel ridiculous at the right level. You don't

want to make them seem too heroic. But that's always more contrived. With Red Dead, it was trying to find something that would work as a period piece without the language bogging you down. You want to keep the games moving, but

you want it to feel like it came from a

time when people spoke more formally

and in a more mannered way. Cowboys can become camp very quickly, and we were scared of that.

What's your process? Obviously you have all these bits and pieces that people can find - or not. They could listen to a certain radio sta- tion or not listen to it. They could talk to a pedestrian or not. There's

the ether of the world where you get little bits that fill out the story. Then, there is the more core story that you could follow a few different paths to get to but is linear at the end of the day.

It's meandering but linear. It's

linear in that you reach an

ending, but hopefully you've felt a certain amount of freedom in how you get there. The first thing we think about is where the game is going to be set. The second thing we think about is who our lead character is. From that, then maybe we think about who our secondary characters are and what our lead character's core, driving quest is. Hopefully, these all feed back into the place. You want something that feels like it would make sense in New York or make sense in the Wild West or, in the case of Max, what would make sense for this character in this place. Then, as much as possible it naturally evolves out from there. Games are very long-form as a medium. We've not made a lot of five-hour games. So, trying to get a wide-range of characters that will fit into the place and trying to link them together, but — above all — building a central theme. All the while, we're trying to think more and learn more about the time and place in which the game is set. We use all that knowledge and research and our feelings and responses to it to pepper the world with things that pedestrians might speak about, advertising, TV shows, arti- cles in newspapers, fake products in news- papers. All that stuff hopefully has the feel that it relates to our core, central themes. But it has to have some degree of reality. Its gathering a lot of information, turning it to our needs, and then dicing it up and spreading it out in a fun way. And remem- bering — at all times — that we're making an interactive experience. So, you always want to reward interactivity. Even if the reward is simply reading something fun, it's much better if you can find it in a weird place. Or, meeting someone is better than reading something, so can we give that information to a character so we can hear them speak and reward the player?

As a writer, you have to balance the demands of story, design, and gameplay. How does the collabora- tion between you and the devel- opers work? As an example, will they come with you and say, *Hey, we just thought of this awesome action sequence. Could you help us incorporate that into the story?" Or do you think of certain sequences and ask them if they can accom- plish it in the game?

Both ways – and all ways in between. Fundamentally, there's a story outline that we agree on with characters built into it. Usually, it exists as a Word document that reads like an overly technical short story. That gets turned into a diagrammatic chart of the game broken down by missions. Those missions are handed off to design- ers who build them out. We'll discuss them and see what's working and what's not working. We'll make sure they're not too similar. You want the game to have peaks and calm bits and try to build it like a series of movies that are running simultaneously. Hopefully, we'll have ideas coming in from everywhere. Once the ideas are accepted, they can be improved by someone who's iterating on them. It's very much a com- munal process. We've tended not to give too much power to the role of the lead designer, because we really believe in